LONDON/FASHION
RULE BRITANNIA, Anna rules the V & A.......we have come over to London especially for the opening at The Victoria and Albert Museum of the exhibition entitled Fashion-ology (until 23 April 2006), dedicated to the life and works of Anna Piaggi our friend of more than thirty years. Anna is unique and eccentric. She is a fashion reporter, editor, divinor of trends, designers' muse and self-styled icon. She is also an extremely nice person and a very good cook. 'Fashion-ology' refers to her idiosyncratic way of looking at clothes. With her own take on scientific precision, an attitude rather than a method, she has for decades told the new stories about fashion. The -ology suffix which transforms the word fashion in the title is an attempt to capture her world of contradictions, or illogical logic as she calls it as well as reveal systems of frivolity, patterns, angles in her work. The layout of the exhibition is a series of intersecting A's and upside down A's that become V's: Anna and Vogue, Anna and Vanity, Anna and her late husband Alfa, and her late friend, Vern Lambert and the V&A. Karl Lagerfeld who sketched her in more than 200 drawings and collected them in the book A Fashion Journal says of her "Dressing is her means of communication. It is an ephemeral act which has constantly to be started over again. There are no rules. Spontaneity is the only law and the occasion is her inspiration...she may wear the same garment often but never in the same context." Anna has had a long relationship with Italian Vogue starting in 1969 and since 1988 to the present day creates her famous Doppie Pagine. These double page spreads were the subject of the book Fashion Algebra, published in 1998 to celebrate their first ten years in Italian Vogue. They have always been inspiration to fashion and graphic designers as well as students. There couldn't be a better place for a show in her honor, as Anna has always been an anglofile and has a big following in London.